


once you discover the secrets of the universe, the universe looks different

by lostintheverse



Series: The Verse of Ari & Dante [1]
Category: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Genre: Boys In Love, Boys Kissing, Canon Compliant, Dante's POV, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Morning After, Post-Canon, aaddtsotu - Freeform, what if it happens like this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-03-08 21:12:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18902749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostintheverse/pseuds/lostintheverse
Summary: Have you ever had someone you were obsessed with, a movie star or a music star or someone, and you just couldn’t believe how beautiful and perfect they were? How they exuded every attribute you found attractive, so that it seemed like they somehow had every single tiny detail that attracted you in a person?And have you ever had a friend who got you on such a deep level that you became more who you were because of them? Not changed - you didn’t change. You just blossomed. Because they SAW you, they saw all of you, and it freed you.Have you ever had someone who was BOTH? Your image of perfection, your ultimate sex icon, your nope-I-wouldn’t-change-a-thing crush...AND your soulmate? Because yeah.It’s intense.*This continues AADDTSOTU, from Dante's point of view.*





	1. the morning after

**Author's Note:**

> OK, the tense jumps around a bit, but *spoiler alert* this is a journal entry. And Dante's thoughts are all over the place. So the English Major in me just has to announce: it's intentional.

When I woke up,  I had a moment of panic. I’m not usually a panicker. But I woke up, and the sun was streaming through my window, and I felt so happy about it. I laid there half-asleep and looked at it, watched the dust particles dancing in the ray of light, and then, suddenly, I remembered last night. Ari kissing me. Ari telling me he’d fallen in love with me the minute he met me. Ari holding my hand as we laid in the back of his truck, looking up at the stars. Ari talking more than he’d ever talked. Ari Ari Ari Ari Ari.

I’d given up. I’d decided that enough was enough. I couldn’t be with him and I couldn’t move on if we were friends. As long as he was in my life, I’d always be kissing him, in my head, no matter who I was kissing.

And anyway, he wouldn’t let me move on. His five-day silent treatment had taught me something. 

And I understood. I did. But he wasn’t mad because Daniel had run away that night, no matter what he told himself and everyone else. Daniel was a loser, sure. He was a sad stand-in for the love of my life. But he was just a boy. He couldn’t be expected to act like a man; we’d never signed up for that. For all I knew,  _ I _ was a poor stand-in for someone he loved. We never said we were anything more. We never even hinted at it.

What made me ditch him was that he wouldn’t stop talking shit about Ari.

But of course he wouldn’t. It was glaringly obvious to Daniel that he was a stand-in. Ari was all I talked about. I knew that. I never claimed anything otherwise. Ari is on my mind at all times. Literally. He is my point of reference in the world. He’s the Most Important Thing.

It wasn’t fair to Daniel. But I still couldn’t just stand by while he talked shit about Ari.

Why am I talking about Daniel? Daniel is not even in this equation. Except to say that he represented my Grand Attempt To Move On that Ari Would Never Let Happen. So I had to end it with Ari. Not because of Daniel. Because of what Daniel represented. It was going to destroy me as a person, but I had to do it. There was no future for sanity in the weird, co-dependent, possessive thing my friendship with Ari had become.

So I was dying inside. God, if only he would see reason. I knew he loved me. I was SO SURE. But I had started doubting myself, because he just wouldn’t budge. No matter what happened, no matter what I did or didn’t do, no matter what I said or didn’t say. I’d tried everything, all the paths. And he just didn’t budge. So yeah, I’d started to doubt my own perception of reality.

And then he kissed me. 

And kissed me. And kissed me. And kissed me.

He kissed me until I’d lost all track of reality. I wasn’t even in this world anymore - I was existing solely in the world of Ari’s kisses. I’ve tried to write what it was like, and erased a million times. There are no words.

And then he pulled away from me, just a little, and I remembered there was a desert, and we were in it. And there was a velvety night sky spotted with stars, and that was above us. And he was him and I was me. It came back to me slowly.

“I’ve been in love with you since I met you,” he whispered. His eyes were wide and serious. I love Ari’s eyes. Who am I kidding, I love Ari’s everything. Have you ever had someone you were obsessed with, a movie star or a music star or someone, and you just couldn’t believe how beautiful and perfect they were? How they exuded every attribute you found attractive, so that it seemed like they somehow had every single tiny detail that attracted you in a person? 

And have you ever had a friend who got you on such a deep level that you became  _ more  _ who you were because of them? Not changed - you didn’t change. You just  _ blossomed _ . Because they SAW you, they saw all of you, and it freed you. 

Have you ever had someone who was BOTH? Your image of perfection, your ultimate sex icon, your nope-I-wouldn’t-change-a-thing crush...AND your soulmate? Because yeah. 

It’s intense.

“Intense” doesn’t begin to explain it. 

Like I said. No words.

Sometimes I felt like I was walking a balance beam. Fall off one side, I’d be in fanboy land, with hearts for pupils and posters all over my walls and crying myself to sleep for the longing. Fall off the other side, and I’d be in best friend land, where I felt like the coolest person alive because he made me feel that way, because he saw me and liked me, and I saw him and liked him, and things were just right in the world when we were together. The Universe was in balance. And we would talk together, and we would be silent together, and we would laugh hysterically together. No filters. No walls. The ultimate comfort, live and in the flesh, right there in your chair with his shoes off and his hair in his eyes and a bored expression on his face. And you know he’s not bored, because you know his expressions and you know “bored” means “I’m listening,” and you know he wants to be there because he’s there and he doesn’t stick around when he doesn’t want to. He’s not afraid to tell someone to fuck off, not afraid to roll his eyes, to punch a guy in the mouth. To be alone. 

He’s not afraid to be alone. If he’s with you, it was because he  _ wants _ to be with you. 

And he’s with you. 

He’s calling you on the phone. He’s taking your calls, and talking for hours. He’s showing up at your house. He’s arguing with you, and then calling you later. You’re the only person he does this with.

The only person.

And there he was, taking a break after kissing me for so long my mouth was sore, and telling me he’d been in love with me since we met. Which was precisely when I fell in love with him. 

So yeah. Once it all came back to me, I started panicking. Because he’d brought me back to my house at like three in the morning (actually, I don’t know what time we got to my house, because we made out in the truck for who knows how long. But when I tumbled into bed the clock said 3:07), and now it's probably at least 10:00 a.m. and he might have changed his mind. No - not changed his mind. Freaked out. It would be such an Ari thing to do. He had never, ever let himself be so vulnerable - not with anyone, not in his life, I was sure of it - and when he woke up this morning he probably freaked out and was avoiding all thought and emotion with renewed fervor. I felt tears pricking behind my eyes and actually shook my head. I could not let myself go down that path in my brain. I overthink everything, I know this, and this train of thought would do me no good. 

So I’m up. And I’m writing this to try and organize my thoughts before I go to his house and see what he’s doing. I doubt he took Legs running at 5:30, being that we were up so late (making out, making promises, holding each other under the stars)...fuck. I sound like a sap. I just need to write this down, though, in case it all goes to shit when I go over there. 

Shower. Brush teeth. I can’t begin to think about eating. Try to get out of the house without Mom and Dad asking a million questions. I wouldn’t mind telling them - they’ve known this whole saga since the assault, no need to start hiding it now - but I just don’t feel like talking to anyone about it until I know what’s going through Ari’s head.

I’m gonna go see him.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on Tumblr at [rareandbeautifulthing](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/rareandbeautifulthing).


	2. three part plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Look up "overthinking" in the dictionary and you'll find the biography of Dante Quintana. Also, Ari is the most hopeless closet romantic in the universe. Pretty fluffy with a bit of intellectual angst (because it's Dante and Ari and that's how they roll).

I tried not to think too much on my way to Ari’s house. I looked for birds instead. I wasn’t disappointed; there were plenty. They flew above me, hopped along in the grass by the sidewalk, perched on the telephone lines. They reminded me of Ari, of how he threatened to fight those kids with the BB gun that time. How he reached out and took it right out of that boy’s hand. It was a weird moment for me because something shifted a little in how I saw the world. I’d never been one to appreciate or respect violence; it seemed like a waste of energy, honestly. But at that moment, Ari made me feel safe. And he did that by exuding violence. Like, if I had been those boys, I would have been scared shitless just by the look on Ari’s face. It was like a stormcloud had settled on his brow, and his eyes were glowering. (I’d thought “glower” was a hokey word until I saw Ari glower, and then I got it.) And he just - I don’t know. He was  _ fearless _ . And anyone who was anywhere near him could feel how fearless he was. That kind of fearlessness is ruthless and powerful and it would have been terrifying, except that it wasn’t because I knew - and he knew, I’m sure he knew - that he was protecting me. Not physically protecting me, of course. But I don’t think he gave a damn about that bird. I cared about the bird. He cared about  _ me. _

The thought made my heart feel full, almost to the point that I was breathless. My thoughts had already moved ahead, though...I was thinking about last night again. I was thinking about how I told him he wasn’t afraid of anything, and he said that wasn’t true, because he was afraid of me. God, that boy. 

But the funny thing is, I got that. He was a fighter. And he told me when we were laying in his truck later that he’d been fighting his feelings for me for so long, and he had finally reached a breaking point. Because that kind of fight couldn’t be won. Feelings don’t pick themselves up off the ground and run away holding a bloody nose, and no one can pull you off feelings and tell you to get ahold of yourself. There’s just a fight, forever, until either you or the feelings get weaker. And his feelings weren’t getting any weaker.

This is actually what he said to me. Almost word for word. ARI MENDOZA SAID THAT.

He said a lot of other things, too. After he told me he’d fallen in love with me the minute he met me, he said - well, no, then he kissed me again. But after that he pulled away and looked at me and said, “I’ve hurt you so much. For so long.” 

He had his hand kind of on my jaw, and I turned my head to kiss his palm. I wasn’t upset about how much I’d been hurting. Just like that, it didn’t matter. At all. What was happening then was worth every second of sadness I’d waded through. “It doesn’t matter now, Ari,” I said.

He smiled, a little sadly. “It does, though, Dante. It matters. I hurt you and I can’t take that back.” Then he got a glint in his eye. “I have a plan, though. To make it up to you.”

_ That _ was intriguing. I seriously hoped the plan involved more kissing.

“A plan?”

“Yeah. Three parts.” 

I waited.

“Do you want to get in the back of the truck?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation. 

So we got in the back of the truck. He had brought a quilt and a comforter. He put down the comforter for the padding, and laid the quilt over it because it was soft. His Aunt Ophelia had made it.

I laid down. He took his shoes off, which made me happy. He flung them over the side of the truck, making me laugh. He laughed, too, and then laid down right up against me, his body half on mine. I was speechless. That much of me had never been in that much physical contact with that much of him before. And he did it like it was nothing, like we curled up together all the time. And the funniest thing was, it  _ felt _ like we curled up together all the time. It didn’t feel novel. Just good. 

Really, really good.

He looked in my face and traced my cheekbones with a fingertip. Then my lips. I was suspended between breaths, hanging in the air, in awe of his touch. 

“So tell me about this plan.” I hadn’t meant to whisper but I had no breath. He grinned that knock-out grin of his that always made me melt. 

“Oh yeah. The three parts.” He took a deep breath. “First of all I’m going to be the best boyfriend in the universe.” He kept talking then but it took me a second to catch up because time had stopped at his casual use of the word  _ boyfriend _ . 

“I’m going to take you on dates,” he was saying, “and make you food, and...I don’t know.” He laughed and I couldn’t stop smiling. “Buy you things? What do boyfriends even do?”

My heart was in my throat. “We’ll figure it out.” I was still whispering by accident. He nodded.

“Part two.” He looked at me for a few moments before continuing. Studied me. “I’m going to talk to you.” I knew I had the hugest, sappiest smile on my face, but I couldn’t seem to control it. “I’ll try to just do it. But it doesn’t come naturally to me, you know? So just in case, I have a deal for you. You can ask me what I’m thinking, at any random time, and I’ll tell you.”

This was even better than the boyfriend stuff, and nothing was better than that. Also it’s worth a mention that he had never spoken so many words in one go before. 

“The whole truth? You won’t leave anything out? That would be lying by omission, you know.”

“The whole truth.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“This is going to be fun.” 

He looked at me, still soft. Open. “Yeah, it is,” he said. 

Then I don’t know what happened, but we were kissing again. Slower this time. Less urgent and more indulgent. And damn, I’d thought he was a good kisser before. Turns out kissing at Ari speed was even sexier than kissing at Dante speed.

They’re both pretty sexy, though. 

When he slid his hands inside my shirt, I gasped. I felt him grin against my mouth, and then he started kissing my neck. Nuzzle-kissing it, and some sucking I was pretty sure would leave a hickey. I hoped it would. Having an Ari hickey would be pretty much the best thing that ever happened.

It’s kind of funny that I thought that, because actually when I went downstairs a few minutes ago on my way to head to Ari’s, I ran into my parents. I knew I would. My dad was at the table with the paper and his coffee; my mom was making huevos rancheros and sipping some kind of herbal tea. Apparently coffee isn’t good for the baby. 

“There he is,” my dad said, looking up with a big grin. I smiled back nervously, just wanting to get the hell out of there and go see Ari. My stomach was in knots. 

“Morning, Dad. Hi, Mom,” I said, crossing the kitchen to kiss my mother on the cheek. She was in the middle of scooping eggs out of the pan so she just leaned her face towards me a little to accept the kiss. She didn’t really look at me. 

When I went to kiss my dad, though...well, I guess he looked at me. Because his eyes did the weirdest thing. They got huge for a second, then narrowed for a second, then they got...soft. Then he cleared his throat in this mildly awkward way and looked back at his paper. 

“You must have gotten in late last night. Sorry your mother and I didn’t wait up, but since you were with Ari we figured you were fine.” He glanced at me then, so swiftly that I almost missed it, then refocused on the paper.

“Oh, yeah. We just went out to our spot in the desert.”  

“Mmm.” He turned the page of the paper in this way that made me 100% sure he wasn’t actually reading it. Not anymore, anyway. “Did you guys do anything else?” 

“Nope. Just hung out in the desert and then he brought me home.” I’m pretty good at reading people, and I was pretty damn sure right then that my dad was pointedly  _ not  _ looking at me. 

“Hmm,” was all he said, and he turned the page of the paper again. I narrowed my eyes at him. I wanted to get to Ari as soon as possible, because I was dying to know...well. I was just dying to know. But my dad had me intrigued now, too. 

“What, Dad?” I asked, right as my mother brought the platter full of huevos rancheros to the table. She almost dropped it; it kind of clattered when it hit the table and when I looked over at her, her mouth was open in an “O.”

“Dante,” she gasped, half admonishing and half amused. 

“What, Mom?” I asked, and then I heard my dad chuckling behind his paper and I looked back at him. I watched him look at my mom, and I felt them share that glance they share sometimes. He shrugged one shoulder - just a tiny gesture - and his face was full of sunshine.

“Mom. Dad. What?” I asked, now thoroughly perplexed.

My mom smiled at me then, in this really warm way, and she kissed my cheek and then sat down and started helping herself to breakfast, looking happy. It occurred to me that if I was a person who got embarrassed, I’d be embarrassed. 

My dad cleared his throat, closed the paper, put it on the table beside him, and looked me straight in the eye. I love my dad’s eyes. They’re so dark brown that they’re almost black, and they’re full of warmth. Never more so than right then.

“So it was just you and Ari hanging out in the desert last night, then?”

“Yes, Dad.”

He grinned at me, and there was something in his expression. “Have you looked in a mirror this morning, son?” he asked. And suddenly, I knew. I knew that I had an Ari hickey. 

I couldn’t help grinning like a lunatic. He raised an eyebrow at me, cleared his throat again, and began scooping huevos rancheros onto his plate.

“Do you want some breakfast?” he asked, and I could tell he was trying his best not to laugh. I loved him so much right then.

“No. I’m actually on my way out.”

He nodded, focusing intently on placing the food on his plate just so. “To see Ari?” he asked lightly. 

I grinned at him until he met my eyes again. He grinned back.

“Yeah.”

So, I guess all in all it went well.

I had to swing by the downstairs bathroom on my way out to check out the hickey. I’m actually quite impressed. It wasn’t just one. There were _ three _ . 

I was a block away from Ari’s at this point. I was so nervous I almost couldn’t keep going, and yet I also couldn’t do anything  _ but  _ keep going. It made me think of Ari and me in the rain that time. Neither of us willing to speed up. “I won’t run if you don’t,” he’d said. 

But he  _ had _ run from me. He hadn’t been running at that point. Not really. Not until the accident. He always ran from his feelings, but I don’t think he was running from them with me at that point. When the accident happened, when everyone got so obsessed with how much he cared about me - that’s what made him start running. I think if it wasn’t for the accident, we may have figured things out a lot sooner. 

Not that we’d figured anything out now. Reality came crashing back, and my stomach clenched again. I was on his porch.

The three part plan, I reminded myself. He’d concocted the most adorable and enticing and fucking sexy three part plan to make it up to me. To make it up to me that he’d run. 

I let my thoughts return to the night before. He was kissing me and at some point I remembered he had only told me two parts. (It was easy to forget everything when Ari was kissing me, as I’ve explained.) 

I had pulled away a little. Pressed my forehead to his. 

“Part three?” I asked. 


	3. reunion, and part three explained

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dante gets to Ari's house and gets the answers he's wanting. We also learn about the rest of Ari's plan. No angst in this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter doesn't jump around as much; since Dante finally gets his answers, his thinking gets less jumbled.
> 
> Warning- This chapter gets very mildly sexy for a minute.

I stood on his porch for at least five minutes, just breathing. Feeling happy that I felt as at home on his porch as I did on mine. We had a thing for porches.

We.

Was there a “we?” Was there an “us?”

I mean, of course there was an “us.” Ari and I were the most quintessential “us” of all time. I don’t think either of us was fully ourselves without the other one. That doesn’t sound healthy, but it is. I mean, I know - believe me, of anyone in the world, I know - who I am and what I want and how to speak my mind and how to enjoy my own company. And as I’ve said, he was a total loner, so it’s not like he needed me to complete him or some bullshit like that. But when we’re together, it’s like we’re more ourselves than we are when we’re apart. 

I don’t know how to explain it.

So anyway, I wasn’t worried that he didn’t love me. Not anymore. Not after last night. What I was afraid of was that he had reverted to his MO of running from everything that meant anything.

I took a deep breath and knocked softly on the door. Immediately, Legs went bananas. I could hear her barking and jumping around inside. I could imagine her bouncing around in excitement like she does. I swear, that dog is my spirit animal.

A moment later, I heard footsteps inside and Mr. Mendoza shushing Legs. The door opened and Legs bolted out and jumped on me. I immediately knelt down and let her kiss my face, and I kissed her face too. After we had re-established our connection, I looked up at Mr. Mendoza, who was just standing there watching us with a smile. Seeing him grounded me a little. (Being greeted so enthusiastically by Legs had grounded me, too.) Mr. Mendoza is dark and serious and quiet and kind. He’s not very expressive (like his son) (well, like his son until 12 hours ago), but there’s a strange kind of solidity to his character that makes me feel secure. He doesn’t smile often. That’s not to say that he’s in any way unfriendly. He’s wonderful. He’s just reserved, and he keeps his smiles tucked away for very particular moments and for very particular people. So the fact that he smiles at me so much makes me feel very honored, every time.

“Dante! Come in. Legs, that’s enough” he said. Legs and I went inside and Mr. Mendoza and I looked at each other. His eyebrow very slowly raised and suddenly I was deeply aware of the bruises on my neck. I smiled at him. He smiled at me. 

“Do you want coffee?” he asked me. I couldn’t help it; I made a face. He laughed. 

“That’s Ari’s thing, Mr. Mendoza. I think it’s vile,” I said, and he laughed again. I grinned at him. He’s really a great guy.

“I think he’s still asleep,” Mr. Mendoza said. “But you’re welcome to go wake him up if you want to.” I told him thanks and bounded up the stairs. Legs followed me, but when we got to Ari’s door, Mr. Mendoza called her. She gave me one little woof and ran back down the stairs to him. Such a good dog.

I opened his door and went inside. I sleep with my shades open so I can enjoy the morning sunlight, but Ari sleeps with his shades and his curtains pulled down tight. His room was still quite dark, despite it being mid-morning, but the sunshine squeezing out around the edges of the window made enough light that I could still see, once my eyes adjusted.

When I met Ari, his room was barren. There was a bed. A small bedside table. A lamp. A clock radio. A rocking chair. It was like a high-end prison cell.

His room was still disarmingly sparse compared to the chronic mess of my own, but now it had a little more character. He had pinned the picture I’d drawn of his rocking chair to the wall. The photo I’d sent him of me standing in front of the Christmas tree was on his bedside table, stood up against his lamp, which was sitting on the sketchbook I’d given him. (The first time I’d noticed that photo there my heart had nearly exploded.) There was a stack of books by his bed - all of them mine. On his rocking chair there was a book of William Carlos Williams poetry with several scraps of paper tucked in it to mark favorite poems. (Also mine.) (Ours. We had read to each other out of that book too many times for it to only be mine anymore.) There was a small framed print of Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” hanging above his bed. He had found it at a garage sale one morning while he was out for his run. (I’m the one who told him about that painting, and how it reminded me of him. When I saw it on his wall, that had made my heart nearly explode, too.) (See, that’s what I mean about thinking he was in love with me. All these little signs. I’d been so sure.) (Turns out I was right after all.)

Ari was asleep on his side, facing me. The sheet was only pulled up to his stomach, and he didn’t have a shirt on, and I couldn’t help myself. I knelt down beside his bed and just watched him for a few minutes in the dim light. His shoulder was so perfectly curved, and the muscles in his arm and chest so perfectly defined, even in utter relaxation. I still couldn’t believe how much his body had changed while I was in Chicago; when I’d left, he was this skinny kid, and when I returned, he looked like a full-grown man who had just stepped out of a Calvin Klein ad. 

And his hair had gotten so long. It was messy against his pillow, hanging down and obscuring his face a bit. I reached out and brushed it back, tucked a bit behind his ear. He shifted a little and his eyelids fluttered open. His eyes focused right on me.

And he grinned.

And then he reached out, snaked that unbelievably sexy arm of his around my torso, and pulled.

Even with all my admiring of his muscles, I had completely underestimated how strong he’d gotten. I was lifted right off the ground and then he was rolling on to his back, pulling me with him, and for one breathtaking minute I was on top of him, and then I was beside him, between him and the wall. We were facing each other and he was grinning at me. In the dusky light, his teeth glowed. 

“God, Ari, you just picked me up with one arm. While lying down,” I breathed, a bit breathless from the abrupt but elegant manhandling. 

“I told you I was good with my body,” he murmured back, and kissed me. 

Oh yeah - that had been part three. Of his three-part plan. 

*******

When I’d asked him for it, he just chuckled against my neck and raised himself up to look in my eyes. “Yeah. That.” He sounded reluctant but looked like he was having the time of his life, and once again I couldn’t stop smiling.

“You don’t sound excited about part three,” I said. 

His eyes were dancing. Aristotle Mendoza’s eyes were dancing. His spit was still wet on my neck. 

“I suspect I’m going to like part three,” I said.

“I hope so,” he said, and I perked right up because suddenly he looked shy. Not in the old-Ari way, but in a happy way. He didn’t say anything else. 

Usually it’s best, with Ari, to wait. Sometimes it’s best not to.

“Ari?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

I admit, this was pretty ruthless. He had just promised me he’d tell me everything he was thinking any time I asked. That was part two of the plan. 

His eyes narrowed. “Seriously?” he said. “I literally just made that rule,” he said. “Shouldn’t there be a grace period?”

That made me laugh. “No grace period. Rules take effect immediately. You know that. You’ve made enough of them.” I cocked my eyebrow and then it was his turn to laugh. 

Then he took a deep breath. He’d been taking a lot of deep breaths since we’d driven out to the desert. Taking a lot of risks. It made me want to hold him and promise him that no matter what he said to me, it would be alright. But he knew that. 

He used his big breath to say, “You know how I said talking doesn’t come naturally to me?”

“A completely redundant statement, by the way. I didn’t just meet you, you know.” Being sarcastic with the dream-guy who had his hands up my shirt was a particular thrill. 

“Yeah, well. I guess not.” We both laughed a little, which turned into laughing a lot, like it always does.

“Anyway. I figured something out,” he said.

I waited. Like I said. Usually, with Ari, waiting is the best idea. 

“I don’t really speak the language of words. Or I mean, I haven’t. I want to. I will. Like I promised. But I do speak another language.” 

I knew he didn’t mean Spanish. I waited.

“You know how I’m kind of good with my body?” 

My entire being flooded with warmth. Just hearing him speak about his body was exhilarating, and the implications of wherever he was going made my head spin.

“Like, everything physical I’m just kind of automatically good at.”

I couldn’t speak. I just kept staring at him. He was blushing. Even in the starlight, I could see his face get darker, his pupils contract like they do when he blushes. “I think I might be really good at...I just mean...ugh. This went better when I rehearsed it in my head.” That made us both dissolve into laughter, breaking the tension. I pulled him closer to me. 

“Keep going,” I coaxed. “I think part three may be my favorite.”

He squeezed me and laughed again. Then he sighed. “I just mean I want to touch you. I’ve wanted to touch you for a long time. And if you want, I’ll make a point to touch you every day. And, you know.” He seemed mortified; I could see the effort it was taking him to keep talking. “Make you feel good.” 

God, the things my body was doing at this little declaration. I felt like I was melting into a puddle and lighting on fire from the inside all at once. It was my turn to take a deep, slow breath. 

“Yes,” I finally said. “I want that.”

He grinned at me, and since he was still hovering above me, I reached up for his mouth. He kissed me back, deeply, and let his hands wander against my skin under my t-shirt. One hand was on my back because he was propping himself up on that elbow, so he had limited mobility. But the other hand had been resting against my ribcage, and that was the one that starting moving. Slowly. Across my belly. Up my solar plexus. Over my chest. Back over my ribs. Back down to my belly, just a little lower this time. The tips of his fingers brushed below the waistband of my jeans, just for a second. I thought I was actually going to die, just spontaneously combust right there. Then he broke our kiss, nudged my nose with his, and took his face away.

And then his mouth was on my stomach. He gripped my hip with a strong hand and trailed kisses along my bare skin. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. 

He dipped his tongue into my belly button. I stared up at the stars, which were blurring together, and twisted my fingers into his silky hair.

“Fuck, Ari,” I breathed. He laughed against my stomach, which tickled and made me laugh too.

He lifted his face up and I looked down at him and good God, seeing Ari Mendoza’s perfect face hovering above my bare stomach with my t-shirt pushed up and his hair hanging in his eyes and his hand holding tight to my hip - I want to keep that image in my head forever. I hope I never forget a single detail. It was the singular most thrilling thing I’d ever seen.

“Not just yet. But yeah. That too,” he whispered, so quietly I could barely hear him, and I collapsed back against the quilt again, completely overwhelmed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the final chapter, by the way. I'm having way too much fun to stop yet. 
> 
> Here's a Calvin Klein ad from 1985 [so it's no wonder Dante loves his arms.](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/14/a5/5c/14a55ca5bb10877711be8479f7de500a.jpg&imgrefurl=https://www.pinterest.com/pin/362821313710596867/&docid=0RezJJHVVEqmrM&tbnid=Q04UKyomBJN40M:&vet=1&w=599&h=729&source=sh/x/im)
> 
> Probably everyone googled it while reading the book, but just in case, this is ["Nighthawks" by Edward Hopper.](https://www.google.com/search?q=nighthawks+edward+hopper&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY7fjynbfiAhUSP60KHQspBNkQ_AUIDigB&biw=1366&bih=654#imgrc=7vFykbkh2aD94M:)


	4. the day gets on with itself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ari and Dante continue the first day of the rest of their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it has taken me so long to update! Many thanks to Confused_Chicana for the nudge :)
> 
> This chapter is a big bowl of fluff with fluff sauce and a little extra fluff sprinkled on top. And I know how uncharacteristic Ari seems here, but it will be addressed, I promise.

Giddy. That’s what I was. I was lying in Ari’s bed with him and we were becoming increasingly twined together, and he was kissing me like there was no tomorrow. 

I had fantasized about this countless times. Except I hadn’t done him justice in my fantasies, because I had always imagined him being a little hesitant, a little shy and reserved.

In reality, he was the opposite. He was kissing me relentlessly; every time I thought he must be about to pull back, to slow it down, he’d just kiss me harder. Deeper. I was completely lost in it. Nothing but sensation and emotion.

When he did eventually stop, he buried his face in my neck. My mouth felt sore and swollen. Everything smelled like him, and his bed was so soft (I loved being in it) and he was so warm and solid, wrapped around me. I breathed him in and let myself drift in the happiness.

After a while, Ari tightened his arms around me, planted one firm kiss on my neck, and raised his head. I met his eyes. The room was a little brighter; even though the shades were still drawn, the day was getting on with itself and the sunshine pushing through the cracks had grown more insistent.

“I like you in my bed,” he said quietly. “Let’s make it the norm someday.” 

God, this boy.

Obviously my anxiety from earlier had been completely unnecessary.

“I think my arm’s asleep,” he said, and his abrupt shift from innuendo to practicality made me huff out a laugh. He pulled his arm out from beneath me and used his now-free hand to take hold of mine. We laced our fingers together and then we just laid there, side by side, one of my legs over one of his. We were quiet. Just thinking our own thoughts, and breathing the same air.

That’s something I’ve always loved about Ari - that we can be silent together and it’s totally comfortable. It’s just never awkward. That’s how I figured out I was in love with him, actually. I just realized one day that I felt happiest when I was with him, even in silence. Especially in silence. He’s a silent guy, and he brought my own silence out of me. Which sounds like a bad thing, but it’s not. Not at all.

“I always wanted to hold hands,” he said suddenly, into the dark room. He squeezed my hand, just a little bit. I don’t think he realized he was doing it. I just laid there and waited. One thing I’ve learned about Ari is that everything takes him a while. He’s just not going to be rushed. That’s what I mean when I say it’s best, with him, to wait. It’s funny to me now, to think about what an impatient guy I was when I met him. He taught me patience.

Eventually he spoke again, like I knew he would. “I would see my parents holding hands sometimes, you know? And it just seemed like the ultimate expression of love or something. It seemed like there was so much power in it, in holding hands. Like if you could just hold someone’s hand, you wouldn’t have to talk.”

That guy can always make me laugh. “I like talking,” I said. That made _him_ laugh. Hard. 

“Yeah I noticed.” I could hear how much he was grinning, which made me grin, too.

“You know you love it,” I teased.

I was totally unprepared for his response.

“You’re right. Everything you say is interesting. And anyway, I love the way your voice sounds.”

It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me, and I couldn’t breathe. He turned his head to the side to look at me, so I did the same. He looked right in my eyes, in that dim light, and said, “It’s my favorite sound, actually.”

I was speechless. I kissed him softly, and he kissed me back for a moment, then pulled away to swipe the tears off my cheeks with his thumb. “You and your tears,” he said, his voice full of fondness.

“I don’t know how I’m going to survive this,” I told him.

“Survive what?”

“You, being so utterly romantic.” His face was right there, an inch away from mine, and it was the whole world.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“God, no.” We laughed.

“Good. Because I don’t think I can.” His voice was barely more than a whisper. “I’ve been stuffing all this down inside me for so long, and now that I’ve decided to let it out, well. It’s kind of overwhelming me.” He’d kept his hand on my face after swiping my tears, and his thumb was running back and forth over my cheekbone. It felt so good. I sighed and let my eyes close.

“It’s overwhelming me, too,” I murmured. “I love it.”

“I love _you,_ ” he said. My eyes popped right back open and looked straight into his. I could feel how ridiculously big my smile was. He’d told me he was in love with me last night, but he hadn’t just said _that_. “I love you.” Those three words, spoken in that order, are the most powerful words in the world.

“Say it again,” I whispered. He held my gaze steady in the dim light.

“I love you, Dante.”

I rolled on top of him and told him I loved, him, too. In his language.

  
  


I don’t think we would have gotten out of that bed at all today if his mother hadn’t eventually come knocking. 

“Are you boys hungry?” she called through the door.

“Yes!” we cried in unison, then dissolved into laughter. She laughed, too, through the door.

“Well come down. I’ve made lunch.”

“Is it lunchtime already?” I asked. In tandem, we looked over to his clock radio. Then he looked at me.

“Yep,” he said needlessly, and I laughed.

“I’m surprised she didn’t stick her head in,” I said. He raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not.”

“You think she knows we’re in here making out?”

He looked away from me, at the wall. He was thinking. Then he nodded, slowly. “I think she hopes so,” he said, and smiled to himself.

By this point he was the one on top of me. He rolled off and hopped out of bed. I sat up and started looking for my shirt, which he had unceremoniously pulled off of me while we were making out. God, his skin against mine had been amazing.

I gave up the search pretty quickly because I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He’d pulled open the shades and was standing there in the bright sunlight in a pair of basketball shorts that hung low on his hips, the dark trail of hair below his belly button disappearing into the front of them like a promise. He was all lean muscle: his chest, his stomach, his arms. I watched him move like I was in a trance. Never had I seen anything so beautiful, so enticing. And the most incredible thing was, I knew if I stood up and kissed him, he’d kiss me back. And if you’ve never experienced looking at the sexiest guy in the universe and knowing he’d kiss you back, well. I hope you do.

He caught me staring and grinned knowingly. I felt my face heat up but I didn’t look away. He held my gaze as he tugged at his shorts and let them fall, pooling at his ankles. He held my gaze as he stepped out of them, and then _I_ looked away because I looked down. Because he wasn’t wearing anything underneath, and seriously. I mean, I’m only human.

I’d seen him naked before, of course, that time in the desert, when we ran around in the rain. This was different. Because of what I just said - that I knew he’d kiss me back. I knew he’d _touch_ me back. I was looking at something I desperately wanted and knew I could have it. It was intoxicating.

He watched me watching him as he crossed over to his bureau, pulled out a pair of black trunks, and pulled them on. He watched me watching him as he picked up a pair of ragged jeans from the floor - the same ones from last night - and balanced first on one leg, then the other, to get them on. How did he manage to be so _graceful_ getting dressed?

And what had made him so suddenly confident? It was such a shift, it still seemed unreal. Almost. Not completely.

Because the way he charged at me right then, his jeans pulled up but still unbuttoned, his shirt still off...the way he lunged at me and knocked me back onto his bed and pinned me beneath him to kiss me senseless yet again...that was real. So, so real.

It took us a while to finally make it downstairs, and I was wearing a t-shirt of his because I couldn’t find mine in the tangle of sheets and blankets and I just didn’t feel like doing an exhaustive search. Mr. Mendoza was at the table, eating tamales, and I saw him notice that I wasn’t wearing the same shirt I’d arrived in. I saw it register on his face. And he smirked at me, and I smirked right back.

I mean, he’d already seen the hickeys. So I guess it wasn’t too surprising. And it had already been made pretty clear from both his and Mrs. Mendoza’s behavior that morning that they knew something was different between Ari and me, and they were good with it. I made a mental note to ask Ari about that later.  

We ate and ate until all the tamales Mrs. Mendoza had made were gone. We talked and laughed with his parents, and Legs had her head in my lap the whole time. Whenever Ari and I caught each other’s eye, he’d give me this brilliant smile. I mean really, it couldn’t have been more perfect.

When we finished, we cleaned up the kitchen while Mrs. Mendoza headed off to her meeting with her church friends and Mr. Mendoza went to cut the grass. That was usually Ari’s job, and when Mr. Mendoza announced that’s where he was headed, Ari said, “I can do it, Dad.”

“I’ll do it today, Ari,” Mr. Mendoza said. “You boys don’t mind washing up, do you? Just...clean up a bit, if you don’t mind, and then...just...enjoy being together.” He met Ari’s eyes and they exchanged this look. “It’s a good day,” Mr. Mendoza said, which was kind of an odd thing to say. Ari smiled at him in a way I’d never seen him smile at his dad, and Mr. Mendoza smiled back, and then he was gone.

“Your parents know, don’t they?” I asked Ari a few minutes later. He was washing and I was drying. He glanced over at me. He looked so...light. Like a weight he’d been carrying his whole life had been lifted.

“Yeah. They know.”

“Did you tell them?”

“I told my dad. He was waiting up to ask me how it went.”

“How what went, Ari?”

Ari handed me the dish he’d been washing, then turned to face me, leaning his hip against the sink. “They knew what I was going to do last night.”

Usually I’m pretty quick on the draw, but it was actually taking me a minute to catch up this time. “What you were going to...you mean, kiss me?”

He shrugged one shoulder. He looked as happy as I felt. “I mean, they probably assumed kissing would be involved. They knew I was going to get together with you. If you still wanted to, I mean,” he added hastily, as if there was ever any question in anyone’s mind about what I wanted when it came to Aristotle Mendoza.

“Wh- How?” I asked. Ari didn’t talk to his parents the way I talked to mine. I couldn’t imagine the conversation he was implying.

He reached out and put his hand on the side of my neck, stroked my jaw with his thumb. I know it’s only been 24 hours, so this is probably presumptuous to say, but I swear I don’t think I’ll ever get over the way my stomach flips when he touches me. I put the plate aside and rested my hands on his hips, hooking my fingers in his belt loops. Because that’s allowed now. Which I’m still reeling over.

“I punched a wall. And my mother sat me down and gave me a beer…”

“She gave you a _beer,_ Ari?”

“Yeah. So I knew something was weird.” We both laughed and I tugged him a little closer, and he didn’t resist a bit.

“Why did you punch a wall?”

He looked a little ashamed. “Honestly? Because I was jealous of Daniel.” I had no words then. I just stared at him. After a moment, he went on. “So then my dad came in and he told me something he’s never told me. About the war.”

“What did he say?”

“It was a war story. It was heartbreaking. But the thing is, Dante, he’d never talked to me about the war. Ever.”

“I know.”

“But it was like he finally saw how all the silence was destroying me. Because it wasn’t just his silence anymore, you know? It was mine. I mean, I had my own. And they knew. So then they just sat there telling me all these things, like how I couldn’t keep running from you because it was killing me, and how it was so obvious I was in love with you, and how much they loved me.”

I stared at him. “Remind me to thank your parents,” I said when I’d finally swallowed past the lump in my throat. I could hear how hoarse my voice sounded. He grinned. His hand was still on my neck, his thumb still stroking, and his other hand had found its way to my waist during all this. He slipped it up under my shirt (his shirt). His fingers were drawing little swirls against my skin. They traced my ribs. I thought about how they’d been broken. About how they were healed. He must have been thinking something similar because he suddenly dropped to his knees, lifted my shirt, and started planting gentle kisses along my ribs, kind of dragging his lips back and forth. I inhaled sharply, threading my fingers into his hair.

“Ari, we’re in the kitchen,” I managed breathlessly. He looked up at me, his eyes dancing. 

“Let’s go back upstairs.”

He didn’t have to say it twice.

 


	5. Demonstrative

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ari and Dante have a talk. And stuff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Ari Met Dante Day!!
> 
> Many thanks, again, to Confused_Chicana, this time for letting me bounce around ideas and questions about this fic.
> 
> Updated notes: Okay, so if you're doing a reread you may notice it's a little different from here on out. It just wasn't sitting well with me how it was. So I changed it. I hope that doesn't make anyone super sad. I actually like the new version a lot better.

I kind of expected Ari to jump my bones when we got upstairs, which is a phrase I’d never thought I’d ever even think, much less write down. The way he was acting was so completely uncharacteristic, and while I was over the moon about it, part of me couldn’t help but be...puzzled.

And maybe just a little concerned.

I mean, to go from the way he had been before to the way he was being now, overnight...well. It’s not like that’s something that happens every day with people. I knew he meant it, but I was also a little worried this was all some weird fluke. That he’d change back to being quiet and withdrawn just as abruptly as he’d become…

“Demonstrative,” I said. We’d just gotten into his room. I’d gone in first, and I sat down on his bed and watched him click the door shut quietly behind him. He nodded slowly, understanding. 

“You asked if that word would ever be an old friend,” he said quietly. 

“You certainly seem on good terms with it now.”

He laughed. “Turns out it’s a fun word.” I laughed too, but not quite as freely as I might have if I wasn’t distracted with my thoughts. His brow furrowed. “What, Dante?” 

“I don’t know, Ari. You just went from one extreme to the other, so fast.”

“Does it bother you?”

“God, no. Like I said, I love it. It’s all I’ve ever dreamed of. More, even. But…” I exhaled, wishing I could just  _ understand.  _

“But you’re afraid it’s not real,” he suggested. I shook my head.

“I know it’s real. I mean, even if you were the type to play games - which you’re not, I mean, I  _ know  _ you - but even if you were. I don’t think you could fake the way you kiss me.” 

He smiled at that. “What, then?”

“You’ve got to know, Ari, how different you are today than you were this time yesterday.”

“This time yesterday I was sitting down to have a beer with my folks.”

“Exactly. And you hadn’t spoken to me for five days.” 

His face fell, and I immediately wanted to take it back, but I knew this was something we needed to talk about. “I mean,” I pushed on. “You said yourself, last night, that talking doesn’t come easily for you. But then everything you’ve said since then has been this beautiful romantic poetry that just rolls off your tongue.” I shrugged, feeling helpless. “Which is it?”

He crossed the room and sat down beside me on the bed. He took my hand, threaded his fingers with mine. 

“Dante.” He exhaled sharply. “Before you, everything was shitty. I mean, everything. My family had all these secrets, and none of us ever talked to each other, and I was mad at everybody all the time, and I felt like my whole life was just this big let-down. Like everyone else understood something I didn’t understand.” He was speaking slowly, choosing his words. “I’d never even had a real friend, you know? Someone who really got me. And that made me so  _ mad _ . And it hurt.”  He shifted on the bed, pulled one leg up so that he was facing me. I mirrored him so we could look at each other straight on. We didn’t let go our hands, though. 

“I thought there was something wrong with me,” he went on. “I felt so  _ alone.  _ And then you just magically appeared one day, and it was like suddenly the world wasn’t quite so bad. I started seeing...beauty...in things. Well, in  _ you _ , anyway.” He smiled at me, and I smiled back. “But I had built up so many layers of resistance, to... I don’t know, protect myself I guess? To keep myself from exploding from anger? And somehow you had found a way through them, and I didn’t know how to process that _. _ I didn’t understand.” He sighed, and looked straight into my eyes, making sure I was listening. “I didn’t understand that I was in love.” 

I squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. “And then you just kept pushing your way more and more into my life, you know? I mean, you’re a pushy guy.” That made me laugh. “You pushed your way into my parents’ lives. You dragged your parents along.”

I laughed even harder. “I’m not sure that’s the most accurate way to describe the situation, but go on.” He laughed, too.

“And I liked it. I  _ needed  _ it. But it freaked me out, too. I mean, I wasn’t used to feeling so connected with someone. And it was good, but it was weird. It was scary. I felt kind of...out of control.” 

I nodded. I understood. “I never had a real friend until you, either, Ari. You’re the first person who ever got me. So I get it.”

“Yeah, but people like you.”

“People like  _ you _ , Ari. You just push them away.” 

I was afraid that would make him mad, but it didn’t. He considered it a moment, then shrugged one shoulder. 

“Fair enough,” he said. “But the point is, Dante. The point is, everything in my life was shitty, and now everything is good. And none of the good started until you came along.” He pulled his hand out of mine, then, and put both hands over his face. “God, I feel like I owe you my life.”

“I owe you  _ my _ life,” I countered. Again, I felt like I was pushing my luck; I wasn’t sure if the accident was still off-limits in his mind. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life not talking about something that had been such a big deal. 

He kept his hands on his face a minute, and I thought he was mad, but when he pulled them away he didn’t look mad at all. He took both my hands in his. 

“I guess we’re even then,” he said, and lifted one of our joined hands to kiss my knuckles. “Anyway, the bigger point here is that I couldn’t deal with that. With how much you had changed my life. I knew it was true, but there were so many reasons I couldn’t let myself admit it. You’re braver than I am.”

“You mean you were afraid of being gay?”

He stared at me, and it occurred to me he might not have thought of himself as gay that directly before. He blinked a couple times and said, “Yeah.” He looked at the wall, thought a minute more, and nodded. “Yeah. Exactly.” He looked back at me. “So I was hard core in denial, and that started making all the good stuff seem bad. And that was the most confusing thing of all. And I don’t know what would have happened if my parents hadn’t decided to lecture me on my love life…” I laughed at that, but he kept on. “It wouldn’t have been good, though. Anyway what I’m trying to say is that I was a mess.  _ You  _ made me a mess. You terrified me, because of how you made me feel. And then...I don’t know. Being told so straight-out that I was in love with you was like a breaking point. I could deny it, and deny my whole  _ self,  _ or I could admit it. But I couldn’t keep ignoring it. Not anymore.” He shrugged. “And then I went for a run.”

“Like, an actual run?”

“Yeah. After my parents talked to me.”

“You went running after drinking a beer?”

He laughed. “I didn’t drink the whole beer. But yeah. I went for a very long run and the whole time I was just thinking about you, and  _ letting  _ myself think about you, and…” He took a shaky breath. “Letting myself feel things. It was...cathartic.”

“Is that another vocabulary word?” I teased. He nudged my knee with his.

“Don’t be a jerk.” I laughed. “But yeah, it is.” We both laughed then. “Anyway, when I got back, I felt like a different person. Like this floodgate had opened up, you know? And everything I had been shoving down inside me was just...flowing. Like a tidal wave. Just, crashing through me.” He took a deep breath, then exhaled. “It still is.” 

I kissed him. Because that was the best answer he could have possibly given me.

“You realize that’s the most you’ve ever said to me?” I asked. 

He laughed, shakily, and I realized how much it had cost him. “I think that’s the most I’ve ever said in my life. Like, cumulative.”

God, that boy. I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes. He laughed, too, then grew serious again.

“But if you want me to try to rein it in, I will. I just….God, Dante. I want you so much. And I trust you so much. I want to say everything I never let myself think. And I want you to hear it.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Don’t you dare rein it in, Ari Mendoza.” 

“You sure?”

“Positive,” I whispered. I pressed my forehead to his. “It just feels too good to be true, you know? But I believe you. I believe it’s true.”

And I did. When I thought about it, this all had started the night before. When I said I wished it was raining, he’d said, “I don’t need the rain. I need you.” That alone was completely unprecedented. 

“It’s the physical stuff, too, that’s blowing my mind,” I said. I was thinking out loud. “Like, how quickly you went from not wanting to kiss me to wanting to make out with me for hours.”

“I never didn’t want to kiss you,” he said without hesitation. “I mean, God, Dante. That’s why I’d got so uncomfortable whenever you brought it up. It took all my strength to pull away from you that day.” 

“You were pretty convincing.”

“I know. I even convinced myself.” He chuckled. “Sort of.” 

We were quiet for a minute, just holding each other’s hands and smiling into each other’s eyes. 

“So this switch that got flipped...it’s not going to flip back?” I finally asked. And I realized that was the real question I’d wanted to ask. That’s what was worrying me.

His dark eyes were soft. “Never,” he said, then he chuckled. “You’re like crack, Dante. I’m completely addicted.” 

And  _ that’s _ when he jumped my bones. 

  
  


“You know what I want to do tonight?” I asked. It was later - several hours later, judging from the way the light coming through the window was turning golden - and we were lying in his bed again, sweaty and tired. I had several new hickeys, and he had a few himself. We’d gotten down to our underwear, but had decided to stop there.

It was me that initiated it. The getting almost-naked, I mean. We had already taken our shirts off, and I was kissing his chest and stomach, thrilling at the feel of his muscles under my lips. To be honest, all I could think about was having sex with him. I didn’t even care exactly what we did...I just couldn’t stand to be this intimate with him and not take it further. Not after having wanted him for so long. 

So while my mouth was trailing along the flat plane of his stomach, I used one hand to unbutton his jeans. He didn’t protest, so I tugged at the zipper. I was peeking up at him, even as I ran my tongue up his treasure line from his waistband to his belly button, and he looked down at me. His mouth was open, his pupils were dilated, and God, he was gorgeous. 

“Okay?” I asked as I slipped my hand inside the waistband of his jeans, between them and the cotton of his trunks. Not too low, in case I freaked him out. Despite how handsy he’d become, I wasn’t sure if he was ready for  _ this  _ just yet _. _ He nodded, his breath coming in huffs, so I sat back and pulled his jeans off in one fluid motion. Then I crawled up his body and kissed him thoroughly. After a minute, he reached between us and started undoing my fly. I pulled back just a little and he immediately moved his mouth to my neck.

“Ari?” 

“Hmm?” He hummed against my skin, which tickled. I kind of giggled and nudged him. 

“ _ Ari, _ ” I said again, and he pulled his mouth away and looked at me. 

“Do you want to have sex?” I asked.

He blushed a little. I’ve always been more comfortable talking about this kind of thing than he has. 

He flushed, but didn’t look away. His hands had found their way inside my jeans, and he gripped my hips. He nodded. 

“I want to,” he said quietly. “But I’m not sure I’m ready just yet. It feels...rushed.” He swallowed. “Are  _ you  _ ready?”

“I just took your pants off, Ari. What do you think?” He laughed, hard. I laughed, too. “And I don’t think anything about our relationship could be categorized as ‘rushed,’” I pointed out, and he nodded in acknowledgement. “I’ve been ready for a long time. But I completely respect that you’re not. I mean, God. You’re already giving me more than I had ever imagined. And that’s saying something, Ari, because I imagined a  _ lot.” _

He smirked at me, looking embarrassed but pleased. 

“Well I should warn you,” he said, his voice shaking just a little. “Whenever it happens, it might be...well. Despite me being good with my body,” and then he winked, the cheeky bastard, and I was so grateful we were having this forthright conversation and that he was still comfortable enough to flirt with me during it. “I will have exactly zero idea what I’m doing. I mean, jeez, Dante, I’ve never even…” His voice trailed off and I raised my eyebrows. 

“Never what, Ari?”

His face was flushing more and more by the second. He looks so cute when he blushes, I swear. He didn’t say anything, and he turned his head so he was staring at the wall. I reached up and gently moved his face to look at me again, and narrowed my eyes.

“Ari?”

He just looked at me, his eyes a bit wild.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.” 

“Argh!” he cried, pulling a hand off my hip to cover his eyes. “I’m really regretting making that rule,” he moaned.   

I couldn’t help it; I laughed, freely. 

“I bet,” I said with mock sympathy. He lifted his hand and glared at me, and I laughed again. 

“Ari?” I reached out and pulled his hand from his eyes, threaded my fingers with his. I waited until he met my eyes again. “It’s just me.” 

He stared at me for a moment more, then smiled just a little and squeezed my hand. 

“I’ve never even masturbated.”

OK, I admit it. I sputtered. It wasn’t cool. I’m not saying it was cool. 

“You  _ what? _ ”

He sighed again and rolled his eyes. “I  _ told _ you I was in denial.” 

“Of your own  _ penis _ ?” I cried, and he laughed so hard that he dumped me off of him and rolled over to bury his face in the bed. He was laughing so hard, I started laughing myself, despite my incredulity. And then that thing happened that happens with us sometimes. Our laughter fed itself, and it just went on and on until we both had tears in our eyes and trouble catching our breaths. It never makes any sense when that happens, but it’s one of my favorite things in life. 

Eventually we got ahold of ourselves enough to look at each other without erupting into another fresh laughing fit. He had sat up, but I was still lying on my side. 

“I was in  _ denial _ about  _ wanting _ you,” he clarified, still smiling ear to ear. “I knew that the minute I let myself...you know...get turned on,” his cheeks started heating up again and God, I wanted to kiss him. “I knew I’d think about  _ you.  _ And I couldn’t let that happen because then it would be the breaking point thing, and I’d have to admit what I felt.” He shook his head. “I had dreams about you, Dante. Dreams where I was kissing you. But I’d wake up and tell myself I didn’t know who it was I was kissing. And then I’d take a cold shower.” He shook his head again. 

I shook my head, too, in disbelief.

“You were awfully aware of your subconscious,” I said, and that broke us. We were both dying laughing again. He fell over onto me, laughing into my neck, and I clung to him, and eventually something started shifting. His breath was so warm against me, and he smelled like Ari, and he felt like Ari, and...well, Ari is the sexiest thing in the world to me. So my body started responding. As his chuckles fizzled out against my skin, I nudged his nose. “Can we still take our clothes off? I mean, if it makes you uncomfortable, we won’t,” I glanced down at his body, clad only in his trunks, and he laughed. “But I really like your skin against mine.” 

In response, he reached down between us and started tugging my jeans down. He sat back on his knees and pulled them off me. Then he laid back down on top of me and shoved his tongue into my mouth. And God, I was a mess. His kissing was relentless.

Ari is seriously the world’s best kisser. And that’s saying something, given how much I’d fantasized about it. I mean literal  _ hours  _ of fantasies. Lengthy, detailed fantasies. And the fact that his real kissing exceeds my daydreams...hell, it leaves them in the dust...should give an appropriate idea of how good he is at kissing.

So I was pretty much on fire, and we hardly had any clothes on, and I think I would have gone through with literally  _ anything _ he wanted to do right then - if he’d wanted to. 

But he wasn’t ready, and that was cool. I like talking people into things, but there was no way I would ever try to talk him into  _ that.  _ I mean, who would want to have sex with someone who didn’t feel 100% good about it? 

I’d happily make out with him for the rest of the day and late into the night, though. And maybe we would have, but then we heard a thing.

We heard Legs barking, and from downstairs we heard his father shush her. Just the low rumble of his comforting words, not even loud enough to understand what he was saying. And we stopped kissing, and listened, together, our foreheads pressed against each other, and heard another low rumble of his voice, and then we heard the door open and shut, like he’d let her into the back yard.

I looked up at Ari, whose face was centimeters from mine. 

“Your dad,” I said. His eyes smiled into mine.

“My dad,” he said. 

He rolled off me.

No matter how supportive Mr. Mendoza was being, it felt a little creepy to be rolling around in our bed mostly naked with him right downstairs.

“You know what I want to do tonight?” I asked. 

“What’s that?”

“I want to go on one of these dates you promised me.”

He grinned. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I want to go to dinner. Like, a proper date.”

“Okay.”

“And then I want you to take me to our place in the desert.”

“Okay,” he said again, and his smile was wicked. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on tumblr as [rareandbeautifulthing](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/rareandbeautifulthing).


	6. dinner date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys go on their first (or thousandth, depending on which one you ask) real date. Dante processes something painful and Ari comforts him. They make it to their spot in the desert. (Summaries are so awkward...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: There is some angst in this one, but it's hurt/comfort so hopefully that's okay.

Ari took me to the place with the good menudo. Good Luck Café, on Alameda. 

“We’ve been on a lot of dates,” he said between sips of water. His aversion to Coke is so weird. 

I had a Coke.

“What are you talking about? This is our first date,” I said, even though I knew what he meant. I was just having fun with the banter, now that he was talking so much.

Not that he hadn’t talked before. He had always talked to me in a way he didn’t talk to anyone else, and that’s part of how I knew he loved me, part of why I never gave up. But this new Ari with his beautiful tsunami of emotion was talking in a way I’d never dreamed, and I didn’t want it to stop. I wanted to coax every word out of him that I could. 

“It’s our first _ official  _ date,” he said. “But everything we ever did was a date, when you think about it. I mean, we’ve been in love this whole time.” 

My heart felt like it was going to explode.

When I found my voice, I said, quietly, “Skateboarding through the park. Going to the movies.”

“Leaving your shoes at the movies.” I kicked him lightly under the table, and he laughed.

“Throwing our shoes down the street.” 

“You teaching me to swim.  _ That  _ was our first date.”

“I’m sorry about Daniel.” I didn’t know I was going to say that.

His eyes got soft. “I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to  _ settle. _ ” 

I laughed so hard at that. 

“I was never going to settle, Ari. I was just trying to get some play.” I said it as a joke, but his eyes narrowed.

“Did you?” he asked. I have to hand it to him; he didn’t look away.

“No,” I whispered. I took a deep breath, because suddenly this was a serious conversation. “I’ve never done anything but kiss.”

He looked satisfied. I wasn’t surprised; he had already proven himself possessive. Which I liked, even though it seemed like I shouldn’t. 

“What about you?” I asked. I thought I knew the answer, so I was blown away.

“Also just kissed. This girl.” He laughed. “I tried to convince myself I was in love with her.” 

He rolled his eyes, and suddenly  _ I  _ was the possessive one. 

I didn’t like this at all. 

“What girl?” I demanded, and then regretted how my voice sounded. Not that I could help it. He raised an eyebrow at me.

“Ileana,” he said slowly. “Didn’t I tell you about her?”

“No.”

“I’m sure I did.” 

“I would’ve remembered, Ari. Trust me.”

He eyed me for a minute. “She was this girl I kissed a few times,” he conceded. “I thought I might date her, but it turned out she had a boyfriend. She was just messing with me.”

I inhaled through my nose, trying very hard not to be jealous. It’s not that I thought I was the only person he’d ever kissed, it’s just...well, yeah. I thought I was the only person he’d ever kissed.

That’s hardly fair, though. I’d done a good bit of kissing in Chicago. Plus Daniel. I could hardly begrudge him. The more important question, as far as I could tell, was...

“You were into her?”

He was looking at me in a weird way. Except then I remembered how well he knows me, and then it wasn’t so weird. He knew I was jealous, and he liked it. I liked that he liked it. 

“I felt like I was supposed to be into  _ somebody _ . What teenage boy has no love interest? And anyway, my real love interest was in Chicago. And, you know, a guy.” He winked at me in this teasing way, and I rolled my eyes, but I didn’t feel upset any more. 

The waitress came then, and brought us each a bowl of menudo and one plate of enchiladas to split. We ate in comfortable silence for a few minutes, then out of the blue Ari said, “I can’t believe you almost broke up with me last night.”

That was an odd way to put it, but I understood what he meant. It  _ did  _ feel like a breakup. It chilled me to the bone to think about it. To think that if he hadn’t had his epiphany...if his parents hadn’t decided to have their big talk with him yesterday...the night may have gone very differently.

“It wouldn’t have worked,” I said.

“I know. I was the one with the keys to the truck. There’s no way I would’ve driven you out of the desert until I got you to take it back. We could’ve lived there for the rest of our lives, if that’s what it took.”

My chest felt so full. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s completely melted me with his beautiful offhand comments today.

“That’s not what I meant. Though I’m glad to hear you say it.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“I just mean that I couldn’t have gone through with it. Not for any length of time. I would’ve been calling you again in three days, tops.” 

He chuckled, and reached across the table to take my hand. I stiffened for a moment; I’d like to say the assault hadn’t affected me, but it had. I was afraid of...well, of being gay in public. I hated that. I exhaled slowly and willed myself to relax. Ari was studying me.

“I’ll kill anyone who even tries to lay a finger on you, Dante,” he said quietly. “What happened to you is never going to happen again.”

I didn’t think there was any way he could guarantee that, but the fact that he said it meant the world. My whole body relaxed. 

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, though,” he said, and he squeezed my hand and let it go. 

God, he’s so sweet. “I’m sorry I let myself get to that point last night, Ari. I’m so sorry I decided to...break up with you.” My breath hitched, because suddenly I was about to cry. The magnitude of what I’d been trying to do really hit me, and it floored me.

Ari leaned forward. “Don’t ever apologize for that again, Dante. I put you through hell, and you were more patient with me than anyone would have a right to expect. I’ll owe you for the rest of my life for putting up with my bullshit for so long.”

We were staring at each other so intensely, I’d forgotten we were in a restaurant. Our food was growing cold between us. 

“I need to be alone with you, right now,” I whispered. Ari looked away from me so he could flag down the waitress. 

“Check, please,” he said. 

  
  


The minute we were inside the truck I basically attacked him. I didn’t even care that we were in a parking lot. He attacked me right back. We were grasping at each other, kissing in this messy, desperate way that was totally new. “I love you I love you I love you,” I kept saying, every time our mouths came apart for a moment. Finally he took hold of my face, one hand on either side, and just looked at me. I had tears streaming down my cheeks. He wiped them with his thumbs.

“I love you, too. Let’s go to the desert.”

“I’ll never do that again,” I promised. He smiled at me gently.

“I know,” he murmured. “I’ll never drive you to that point again. I swear.” 

A sob escaped me. I was so overwrought with emotion, with horror that I had tried to end our friendship. I hadn’t even processed it until that moment, and now it was just flooding me. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it inside my ears. The only time I could remember being this worked up was when Ari got hit by the car. And, well, when those guys jumped me. That, too. 

“Dante,” Ari said firmly. I met his eyes, tears still streaming. “ _ Stop _ ,” he said. “I love you. Nothing would have ended. What you were doing was totally justified, and it totally would have failed.” He was still holding my face with his strong hands. “I wouldn’t have let you go. If I hadn’t already gotten to the point of admitting I love you, I would have.  _ That  _ would have been my breaking point. So just _ stop  _ freaking out.” His words were a command, but his voice was gentle and his eyes were full of tenderness. I grasped his wrists and nodded. He breathed out a little laugh and shook his head. “Good lord, what did I do to deserve you?” he asked. It seemed like he was talking more to himself than to me. After a moment, he whispered, “You’re so perfect. What do you even see in me?”

I reached out then, put my hands on his shoulders. 

“I’m not perfect, Ari,” I said breathlessly. “Far from it. But I thought you’d figured out how perfect  _ you _ are. You’ve been so confident and...forward…” 

“Because I know you’re into me. It does wonders for the self-confidence, to know that if you kiss the sexiest guy in the universe, he’ll kiss you back.”

I swear this is how this whole thing went down. I swear I had that exact thought earlier, and then he said it verbatim to me in that parking lot. 

This is how in tune we are. 

“It doesn’t mean I think it makes any sense at all,” he went on, unaware of the cosmic irony that had just occurred. “You could have anyone you wanted. You know that, right?”

I reached up to trace his cheekbone, and then his lips, with a fingertip. “Being that all I ever wanted was you, I guess I can’t argue.” 

The look in his eyes destroyed me. In a good way. 

  
  


When we pulled out of the parking lot, he reached out his arm to me. 

“C’mere,” he said quietly. 

I scooted across the bench seat towards him. He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me tight. I swung my legs to the other side of the gear shift, the side closer to him, so that I could lean into him. It reminded me of the way my mom had leaned into my dad that day when Ari lent them his truck. 

It felt so good, to be pressed up against him. I let my hand rest on his thigh. He didn’t flinch. 

I couldn’t believe this was my life.

“Do you want me to put on music?” I asked after a while. His arm was still around me and I didn’t really want to lean away from him enough to reach the box of cassettes, but I felt like I should ask. Being the one with access to the cassettes and all. He shrugged one shoulder.

“If you want. I’m fine either way.”

I stayed snuggled up against him, and the quiet in the truck was like music itself. It made me think about last night - really think about it. Compare that drive to the desert to this one. If someone had told me what tonight would be like, I wouldn’t have believed them. 

Actually I would have. And I would have been over the moon. 

Last night, on the drive to the desert, I was mad. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was. Ari had given me the silent treatment for five days and then suddenly called up out of nowhere wanting to hang out. And I was mad already, because of what I’ve said. I knew he loved me. I was so sure. But I was starting to doubt myself, and  _ that  _ made me mad. I don’t usually doubt myself because I’m not usually wrong. That may sound arrogant, but it’s true. 

So honestly I just had layers of anger at Ari, and also layers of sadness, and I had already decided to end our friendship, so I was miserable. My heart was breaking, again and again on loop. 

So the silence in the truck last night hadn’t felt peaceful. It had amplified _ his  _ silence, his perpetual silence on the things that mattered most. By the time we got to our spot, I was a mess of emotion, all of it negative.

The silence tonight was the opposite: it was blissful. His arm around me, his fingers stroking my shoulder seemingly unconsciously. My hand on his leg, my body up against his. Spontaneously, I reached up and kissed him below the ear. He breathed out a laugh and squirmed a little like it had tickled, then he looked at me and met my eyes and all I saw was openness and love. 

There was a question that had been playing through my head. Seeing all that love and trust in his eyes made me decide to ask it. “So...if you’ve never masturbated, and you’ve never had sex…does that mean you’ve never had an orgasm?” 

“Dante,” Ari groaned, looking back at the road. “Do we  _ have  _ to talk about this?” 

“If we’re going to have sex, Ari, we should be able to talk about it.”  

He sighed such a put-out sigh, it made me laugh. 

“ _ You, _ ” he said, and though he sounded exasperated, he also sounded affectionate. “Fine. No, I haven’t had an orgasm. Not awake, anyway.” His face flushed bright red then, and he blinked a few times, and I took pity because I knew how much I was asking of him to be so forthright. It meant the world that he was going through with it instead of shutting down. He really meant it: all that he’d said, his promise to talk to me. He meant it all. That was crystal clear. 

I was also quite delighted by his response. When he side-eyed me and took in my expression, he scowled. “Why are you smirking?” he asked.

I bit my bottom lip, and his eyes shifted from suspicion to...something else. Something that made me feel warm and...well, beautiful.

I put my mouth on his neck, and he squirmed again, but in a different way. “It’s gonna blow your mind, is all,” I murmured, squeezing his thigh. “Will you let yourself, now?” I asked him. He glanced at me, and I recognized the look in his eyes. Desire. I’d looked at him that way too many times to not recognize it when I saw it. The fact that I was seeing it in  _ his _ eyes still blows my mind, though. I’m the luckiest guy in the universe. 

“Yeah,” he said simply. 

“And will you think of me?”

He grinned. “I don’t think I could help myself. That’s my whole  _ point.”  _

That was a very satisfying answer. “And next time I masturbate, I’ll be thinking about you getting yourself off thinking about me,” I said. He opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again. After a second, he grinned a half-grin and nodded. 

When we pulled into our spot, he threw the truck in park, yanked the emergency break, and breathed, “Finally,” before grabbing my face and kissing me senseless. 

“You know what I love the most?” he asked, breathlessly, a little while later. I was still dazed from his kissing. The whole situation felt a little surreal.

“Hmm?”

“How you kiss me back. No matter when I kiss you, or how I kiss you, you just keep kissing me back.” He nudged my nose with his. “It seems like you’d kiss me back as long as I kept kissing you, even if it was forever.”

I responded with no hesitation. “I would.”

He shook his head. “I hope you never figure out how out of my league you are.”

That made me laugh. That boy. I swear to God.

“I hope I can get you to see you the way the rest of the world sees you,” I countered. “Then you won’t speak such nonsense.”

“The way  _ you _ see me, Dante. I’m not sure you can speak for the rest of the world.”

“I am.” 

He laughed so hard. “I love you,” he said. I inhaled deeply, like I could bring his love into the core of my self. 

I had. I had brought it in. It was glorious.

“Can we get in the back?” I asked. “I need to be horizontal with you.”

Without a beat of hesitation he opened the door and got out of the truck. Since I was practically in the driver’s seat, I got out his door, too. Another difference from last night. 

I shut the door and then he surprised me by pushing me up against the truck and shoving his tongue down my throat. I kissed him back just as deeply. Like he said, I’ll always kiss him back.

His hands wandered up under my shirt. I love that that’s a thing with him. He seems to really get off on putting his hands inside my clothes, and I’m here for it.

We made out for a while and then suddenly he put his hands on my rear and before I had a chance to react to _ that  _ new (and delightful) thing, he’d boosted me up so that he was holding me in the air, my back against the truck, his hands firmly gripping me. I wrapped my legs around him and as soon as I did, he shoved us away from the truck. He was kissing me so deeply, it took me a second to realize he was also  _ walking _ . Just holding me up, kissing me blind, and walking, like it was nothing. It wasn’t until we were at the tailgate that I figured out what was happening. He was still kissing me like there was no tomorrow, but he let go of me with one hand (still continuing to effortlessly hold me up with one arm because dear God my boyfriend is a dream) and used that hand to unlatch the tailgate. He stepped back as it swung down (still kissing me, though it was a little disorganized, I’ll admit), then he sat me on the tailgate, put his hands on my hips, and pulled me flush against him. And then we just made out like that for a while, with him standing there and me seated on the tailgate, my legs still around him and my hands in his hair. 

I was lost again, completely unaware of where I was or who I was or anything beyond the physical sensations of making out with Aristotle Mendoza, when he abruptly pulled away from me. A whine of protest came out of my mouth, and he laughed wickedly and I watched in a daze as he placed one hand beside me, on the tailgate, and leapt into the back of the truck like an Olympic jumper.

“Damn, Ari. You _ are _ good with your body,” I breathed, and he laughed so freely my heart completely melted. He was already at the storage box behind the cab, pulling out the comforter and quilt. I watched him spread them out, then he knelt down on the makeshift bed and gazed at me. We just stayed like that, eyes locked, for a minute or two.

Finally he broke the tension by saying, “What are you waiting for?” and then I was clambering across the quilt to him, grabbing him and kissing him mercilessly. 

No wonder I’d been so enthralled with this guy. I must have sensed, deep down, how over the top his sexiness level would be if I ever managed to land him. 

He shoved me down onto my back, then crawled on top of me and looked me straight in the eyes. “You do understand that I’m madly in love with you, right?” he asked. 

“God, Ari,” I moaned, completely overwhelmed. He was watching me, like he was actually waiting for a confirmation. “Yes,” I breathed. “Yes, I am completely sure you’re as in love with me as I always thought.” 

He laughed that free laugh again, and my heart swelled. “It must be nice to always be right,” he said, his face like the sun and his eyes dancing.

“It is,” I agreed, and he laughed again and went back to kissing me. 

  
  
  


  
  
  
  
  


  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This is the song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVcRIrEriYw) that was playing in my head while I wrote this chapter. It always reminds me of Ari: “you see my good through the fog and the barricade of stone/it’s a gift to be truly known/what did I do, what did I do, what did I do to deserve you?/what do you see, what do you see in me?/I think you love me even more than I do...”


	7. uncensored

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dreams and revelations and plans. And a lot of making out.

 

“Do you really not mind?” Ari asked me. We’d been making out in the back of the truck for a while, and we were both fully aware of the other’s erection. The fact that he had an erection was absolutely thrilling to me. He definitely wasn’t faking any of this. Not that I thought he was, but still. There’s nothing like good, old-fashioned validation. 

“I literally don’t mind anything right now, Ari. But what, specifically, do you mean?”

He was half on top of me in that way I love, his leg tucked between mine. He reached down and touched my face. Ran his fingertips over my eyebrows, down my nose, across my lips. I kissed his fingertip.

“That I don’t want to have sex yet,” he said quietly. He actually looked stressed about it. I wove my fingers up into his hair.

“Please don’t worry about that for another minute, Ari,” I said. “I mean hell, every guy should shake hands with his best friend at least a few times before...well...shaking hands with his other best friend.”

Ari groaned and collapsed flat on his back. “For the love of God, Dante. Would you  _ please  _ never refer to it that way again?” 

That made me laugh so hard. He watched me laugh for a minute, looking drunk-in-love. When my laughter died down I said, “I think it’ll actually be better this way.”

“What way?”

“You know. Getting ourselves off to fantasies of having sex with each other for a while before we actually do it. It’s kinda hot, when you think about it.”

He smiled, almost to himself. “Yeah. It is.” Then he kissed me. His hands went to the waistband of my jeans, then to my fly, then inside, on top of my trunks. I groaned and grasped at his shoulders, and he made a little humming sound. 

“Take them off, okay?” I hadn’t meant to whisper, but apparently that’s something that happens with me when I get super overwhelmed. (I’ve only very recently learned this.) He sat up on his knees, between my legs, and gave me his knock-out smile and pulled my jeans off. Then he made quick work of his own. My heart was starting to go faster and faster, just looking at him looking at my body with intoxicated eyes. I reached out and took his arm and tugged, and he obeyed, lowering himself back on top of me. Then I clutched at him and rolled, so he was the one on his back.

I crawled up his body, slowly, tracing his flat planes and gentle curves lightly with my lips all the way, and his mouth was open and he was panting a little by the time my mouth got to his. I put one hand on his hip, letting my thumb stroke the soft skin there, and I wove my other hand up into his hair, and I lowered down onto him so that the only barrier between us was our cotton trunks, silky soft from having been washed a thousand times. When I let my body weight rest on him he breathed out my name in this desperate way that brought me to my metaphorical knees. He bucked up against me, and a little groan escaped me because it felt so good. Then I moved my mouth to his neck where I sucked and nipped and placed gentle, chaste kisses, and he actually  _ whimpered _ . 

I kept at this game for a while, my hands and my mouth roaming everywhere except the space covered by his trunks, alternating between featherlight touches and sudden, firm grasping, just experiencing this glorious person that I’d longed for deep in my bones for what felt like my whole life. He kept making the most lovely sounds: a whimper here, a groan there, my name gasped out like he was drowning. Every so often his hips would buck and he’d press himself up against me, seemingly involuntarily, and after a while he was trembling all over. 

“ _ Fuck _ , Dante,” he finally burst out, and I couldn’t stop the triumphant grin that erupted on my face. “If you keep doing what you’re doing...” I watched him throw his head back against the quilt, his eyes fluttering, and immediately withdrew my hands from his body and pulled completely away from him. His eyes found mine, intense and full of wanting, and his chest heaved with the force of his breathing, and he was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. His hands clenched in the quilt, balling it up in his fists, and he just kept breathing heavily and staring me down. I stared right back. “Let’s just...talk for awhile, okay? I mean, I know you haven’t even done anything to me, really, but...it feels like...so much.” 

“No problem, Ari. You know I’m always up for talking.” 

That cracked him up. I was breathing heavy, too, and so turned on I felt like I had a fever. It was a good idea to slow way, way down.

So I laid down beside him on the quilt, and draped my leg over his, and he wove his fingers through mine and we looked up at the stars.

“What’s your favorite dream you’ve ever had?” I asked him. 

He was quiet for a while. “I don’t know,” he finally answered. “I don’t usually like my dreams.”

“What’s the worst dream you’ve ever had, then?”

He chuckled. “If you’re trying to kill the mood, love, you’re doing a great job.” 

I laughed, too, and told myself I wouldn’t let on how my stomach flipped over by his casually calling me “love.”

But I’m me, so I replied with, “I like you calling me ‘love.’”

He turned his head and met my eyes. “Noted.”

“So are you going to tell me?”

“About my worst dream?” He laughed. “I don’t know. That’s a weird question.”

“It’s not that weird, Ari. Personal, maybe, but so are most of our conversations.” I grinned, and so did he.

“This is true. You’re so _ uncensored, _ Dante.”

I laughed. “True. But mostly just with you. Not as much with anyone else.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Somehow I have trouble believing that. It’s one of your defining characteristics.”

“Did it never occur to you that you’re not the only one who only shows certain parts of himself when we’re together? I mean, I know that’s true about you, Ari. I know you’ve been showing me parts of yourself all along that you never showed to anyone else.” He held my gaze in silent acknowledgement. “Same here.”

He sat up and looked down at me. “Really?” he asked.

I sat up, too. “Yeah of course, really. You’re my  _ best friend. _ I’ve never said those words to anyone else, ever. I mean, I’m not going to pretend I walk around censoring myself like most people do. I mean, it’s such a waste of time and energy. If someone doesn’t want to talk to me because of who I am then they’re not worth the effort. But, still. You’re different.” I smile. “You’ve always been different.” 

He smiled back. “I didn’t know that,” he said, simply. 

“I gave you my sketchbook, Ari. It was an allegorical thing to do.”

“I  _ definitely  _ didn’t catch that.” 

“That’s okay. I didn’t mean for it to be an allegory. I just now thought of it.”

We both laughed, then, and then I pulled his face back to mine so I could kiss him some more. I’ll never get enough of kissing Ari. Never.

 

“So, my worst dream,” he said quietly, a little later. We’d gone back to lying side by side and holding hands and looking up at the stars. “I think it might have been this one where that girl Ileana was in my truck with me, and I was looking at her when I should have been looking at the road and because I was looking at her…” He took a deep breath and actually shuddered. “I hit you. With my truck.” He squeezed his eyes shut. 

I was speechless for a while. Then I said, quietly, “Damn. Talk about allegories.” He put his hands over his face. After a second, I reached out and tugged them down. Held them tight.

“It’s okay, Ari,” I whispered. “It was just a dream.” 

“It wasn’t, though, Dante. It was a message. From my own brain.” He looked agonized. “From my own  _ heart.  _ I should have realized then…”

“You  _ did,  _ Ari. You did realize then. You just weren’t ready to face it. And that’s okay.” 

“Can we talk about something else?” he asked, and I nodded. 

God, I loved him. I loved him for how much he cared, and how careful he was, and how guarded. He didn’t realize how brave he was. He didn’t realize that when I said he wasn’t afraid of anything, I meant it. Because maybe it had taken him a while to admit to his feelings for me, but he had, eventually, despite the burden it carried in our prejudiced world. And in the meantime, he didn’t need to admit it, because he’d shown me every day. He’d shown me by staying my friend when I came out to him and told him I loved him. (Who _ does _ that? What friend sticks around at that point?) (Ari. Ari did.) He’d shown me by literally throwing himself in harm’s way and almost dying to save my life. He’d shown me by being so upset by my assault that he risked everything - getting arrested, losing his parents’ love (or so he thought) - by attacking one of the boys who attacked me. 

He’d shown me by sharing himself with me in ways he’d never shared himself before.

I felt like I would die from how much I adored him. How much I admired him. How fucking  _ brave _ he was. 

“We can talk about whatever you want,” I whispered, overwhelmed.

“Actually, I’m all talked out at the moment. Can we just kiss?”

I smiled at him and kissed him for a long, long time.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be one more chapter, and it's short, too. I almost combined it with this one, but I like them better separate. But since they go together, I'll post it shortly.


	8. dante finishes his journal entry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just posted chapter seven, so if you didn't read that, go back and read it before this one!

Ari woke me up by saying, “If we lay here any longer I’m going to fall asleep.” 

It took a second for my head to reconvene. The first thing I noticed was how happy I felt. My heart was full. Then I noticed we had our arms around each other. Then I remembered everything. All of this happened in less than a second, of course.

“I don’t want to separate from you tonight,” I said. I tightened my arms around him. He tightened his around me. 

“Whose house do you want to sleep at?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Not that he’d agreed - I knew he would - but that we were there in the first place, entwined under the stars like we were the only two people in the universe. 

I thought for a minute. “Yours, I guess. Legs.” 

He buried his face in my neck, making me break out in chills. “Yours then. I can’t possibly get up at 5:30 to go running with her. That’s, like, an hour away. If I’m not home, she’ll wake up my dad and he’ll take her out.”   
Oh God, I laughed at that. So did he. But he was serious.

“It’s not that late, Ari,” I countered, though I didn’t really care where we slept as long as we could be curled around each other.

“It’s not  _ that  _ late, but it’s late. Look at the moon, Dante.” I did. He was right; it was on the other side of the sky from where it was when we had arrived. Hours must have passed. 

“Wow. Time flies when you’re having fun,” I was serious, but he busted out laughing.

“Agreed.”

“My house,” I said, and he grinned at me.  

When I got in the passenger seat, I immediately slid across to him and snuggled up against him like I’d done on the drive in. He kissed my temple as he cranked up the engine, his hair brushing my face. As soon as he had the truck in fifth gear, he wrapped his arm around me and kissed my temple again. It’s nice to sit next to each other, because we’re about the same height sitting (my height is in my legs, apparently) so he can have his arm around my shoulders comfortably. 

“Should we go by your house and leave a note for your folks?” I asked him, once we were getting close to town. He thought for a minute.

“They’ll know where I am,” he said, sounding unsure.

“We should leave them a note,” I said, and he nodded. Then I added, “We’re so lucky.”

He glanced at me. 

“Yeah, we are, in a lot of ways. Which way do you mean?”

“Just that our parents are...well...they want us to be together. A lot of parents wouldn’t be like that.” He nodded again, slowly, like he was imagining how different things could so easily be. “And they seem completely fine with us...you know. Being physical.”

“Do they?”

“Well, your mom didn’t interrupt this morning.” 

“True.” 

“And my parents thought the hickeys you’d given me last night were hilarious.”

He blushed again. It was really something, how many times he had blushed in the last 24 hours. He was way out of his comfort zone, I knew, but he kept pushing through. He wasn’t running. It made my heart flutter, every time. 

He was quiet for a minute, then said, quite logically, “Well, it’s not like we can get each other pregnant.” 

I dissolved into laughter. He kept glancing at me, watching me laugh, his grin huge. 

“You never cease to amaze me, Aristotle Mendoza.”

He looked at me, his face inches away, his eyes soft and serious. 

“You never cease to amaze  _ me,  _ Dante Quintana.”

  
  


When we stepped inside his front door and I closed it behind me he sort of twirled me so my back was against the door and he was pressed against me. He had me pinned there and was kissing me again before I even knew what was happening. I kissed him back, of course. Like I said, I always will. Our hands were on each other’s bodies. He was kissing me so hard it was like we were long lost lovers, finally reunited. He had  _ just _ been kissing me in his driveway, less than a minute ago, but I wasn’t complaining. I melted into him, letting him hold me up.

There was a cough in the hall. We both knew it was Mr. Mendoza. We stopped kissing, but Ari didn’t pull away. Instead he grinned, his lips an inch away from mine. 

“Hey, Dad,” he said, and only then did he turn around, slipping his arm around my waist and pulling me with him in one fluid movement. We stood there with our arms around each other, smiling at Mr. Mendoza, who was in his bathrobe wearing his own huge smile. 

“We were just coming by to leave a note. But...um. Now I guess I don’t have to?” Mr. Mendoza just kept smiling at us. He seemed genuinely happy. “I’m going to sleep at Dante’s, okay?”

Mr. Mendoza nodded, and to my infinite surprise, he reached out both arms and pulled us into a hug. 

“Night, then,” he said, releasing us. 

When we got back in the truck, Ari had tears in his eyes. 

  
  


At my house, my parents were in bed already. We tiptoed in, and tiptoed up the stairs, and closed my door carefully, and then Ari sat down on the side of my bed and took off his shoes and just looked at me.

“This has been the most amazing 36 hours of my life,” I said. He smiled up at me.

“Me too,” he said, and then he stood up and started taking his clothes off, like it was nothing. I watched him move, all lithe muscles and grace. Once again it hit me, that this beautiful person was my boyfriend. That I didn’t have to long for him anymore, because he’d kiss me back. He’d touch me back. He’d talk to me. 

He left on his trunks and got into bed. “Come on,” he said sleepily.     
I took off my clothes and crawled into bed with him. I wrapped my body around his and he threaded his fingers through mine. He pressed his nose to mine, his face relaxed and open. 

“I was so afraid when I came over this morning,” I whispered. He started tracing sleepy circles on my back with his free hand, his eyes half closed.

“Afraid of what?”

“I was afraid you would’ve changed your mind. Or...not changed your mind, exactly, but…freaked out, and shut down.”

He was quiet for a minute, just tracing his circles and looking at me with his sleepy eyes. 

“I understand why you’d think that. I promise it’s not gonna happen.”

I took a deep breath. “I know that, now.”

“I can’t do without you, Dante,” he murmured, blinking slowly and heavily, and I realized he was falling asleep. His words were like molasses. “I never could, but I can’t even pretend to now. You changed my life.” His eyes fluttered shut, but he kept talking, just a low mumble. “I’ll never be the same.” He shook his head just a tiny bit. “Not ever.” His hand stilled, and my rock-star-crush/best-friend-soulmate was asleep. 

I laid there for what felt like a long time, letting the warmth in my heart overflow, just relishing the weight of his hand on my back, his deep, slow breathing, the scent of him that was just pure Ari. Kind of like cinnamon and summertime mixed together. I thought through all the parts of last night and today. I replayed every moment. I tried to remember every smile he gave me, every laugh we shared. (So many.) 

Then I slipped my hand out of his and slid out from under his hand, ever so carefully so as not to wake him, and sat down to write this. 

Now the sun is rising, slowly turning my room golden, and  _ my _ eyes are blinking slow and heavy, and I’m going to go get into bed with my love. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this has been such an amazing experience. I know the readership is small, but I don't really care about that - I write this shit for myself, but knowing that a few of you have been so invested with me has meant the world. I'm not ready to be done with this world, so ~~I've already started a companion fic (which is not Dante-journal-entries, at least not entirely...some may sneak in, but right now it's actually in Ari's POV...). I'll start posting that one day soon.~~
> 
> I missed the Dante journal entries so I've started a sequel that starts the next morning. It's [here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19470853/chapters/46347529)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr at [rareandbeautifulthing](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/rareandbeautifulthing).


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